


that look in your eyes

by joeri



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Developing Relationship, M/M, Misunderstandings, Sexual Tension, idk what counts as angst... theyre just sad for a bit its fine, tagged mature just to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-30 19:17:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: “Because it’syou, Sylvain. You’re never going to be with me.”





	that look in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again at stupid sad shit
> 
> this probably doesnt even need the mature tag. sylvain just talks about sex. he wants to fuck felix. honestly who doesnt.

Felix kisses curtly, briefly, sharp motions that leave nothing to the imagination; he spares no chances to pry open his eyes and peer up at Sylvain. Whether it’s to analyze something about him or merely to cast something of a black magic spell on Sylvain, he’s mesmerized whenever their eyes meet.

He’s got the glimpse of a man possessed.

Sylvain thinks there’s a darkness inherent in the way Felix observes him. It’s mirrored in the nice little nightmare spot behind Sylvain’s eyes where he pretends his actions all but have no consequence. Maybe it’s found too in the way Felix presses his palms up against Sylvain’s chest once Sylvain’s hands try to travel to where they’ve never been—where he’s only dreamt of them being.

Like always, he stops. In the closest thing to contrition, Felix gives a somewhat healing peck to the lips, much the wax stamp on an envelope and says, “don’t dream too hard about me,” before sending him on his merry way.

It’s two steps out the door before Sylvain takes Felix’s hand and says, “why can’t I stay the night?”

It doesn’t look like Felix even cares about answering the question. His mouth, pulled into a fat line doesn’t move. Those eyes, just as entranced don’t seem to linger quite as hard. He just fixes Sylvain with this face like he’s supposed to know. Sylvain _doesn’t_ and he won’t until it’s spelled out for him.

The door clicks shut.

There’s a dance to how they do this: pretending they aren’t dating (because really, they are, they have to be, Sylvain’s giving him the _most_ of his attention) and pretending they always _have_ because since Ingrid demanded she be the baby and Felix played father, it’s always been him in their game of house—it’s always been _them_.

Even when they got older and Ingrid wasn’t the baby anymore, when she started taking care of the both of them, and even when Sylvain sprung up like a weed and wasn’t shorter than Felix anymore… it has always been them together in a house of cards—it’s always been _him._

Felix Hugo Fraldarius.

“Sylvain Jose Gautier,” he says.

“That’s what I’m called,” Sylvain answers.

“If you pull that shit again, I’ll break every bone in your legs.”

The conversation isn’t long. From the moment that Felix stormed into Sylvain’s room, ready to holler his voice sore until Dimitri leaves a sternly worded note slipped beneath the locked door, he should’ve known they’d just collapse in again, stars with no future but each others.

The kiss is a rough smack of two bodies that smooths out, as though Felix soon enough loses the will to pretend he’s not placated by Sylvain’s lips.

“Then we’d really—” In between kisses. “Mn—Really die together.”

A pair of fangs sink into Sylvain’s lip. “Who says I’d stick around?” Then he kisses up and down his neck, licking and biting.

Two boys crawl across the expanse of Sylvain’s ornate sheets, while Sylvain himself laughs, pants, _groans._

“You’d leave me there?”

The meat of Felix’s knees straddle, bracket Sylvain’s hips as he licks his chops (predatory?), his elbows locked in tight, wrists hanging loosely at Sylvain’s shoulders. Sylvain thinks dimly to himself, Felix would look majestic, _animal_ with his hair pulled loose and a smile if he could manage.

Like a mind reader, Felix pulls back to lock eyes, smiles just a bit and lets Sylvain notice his sweat in his teeth.

“If you want to keep me, keep it interesting.”

_Oh._

Is that what he wants? Has Sylvain just been too generic in his come-ons? Felix has seen the way he’s been with women. He needs something fresh, something he’s never witnessed. Truly, how cavalier of him to not tailor an experience just for Felix. He’s got to play to his passions, let him know what sets him apart from the rest.

After all, Felix must feel as though he’s competing with every other hickey found under his neck. It makes Sylvain’s stomach go gooey, with pleasantness and… unpleasantness. It might be compunction, and it might hurt to think that in some way he’s already fucked this up.

But Felix is here with him, kissing him, touching him, loving him, so how could he have gotten it so wrong already?

Maybe it’s panic. Sylvain takes Felix by the waist and flips them over. He moves their hips together slow. It’s then that Felix makes a noise Sylvain’s never heard him make. He starts wrapping himself all around Sylvain and Sylvain mumbles a prayer into Felix’s shoulder.

This feels like progress. It’s progress when he’s never able to catch Felix off guard.

_“I’m not telling you twice,”_ he’d said. _“I love you, and I don’t think it’s altogether fair of you to make me feel that way, but I do.”_

And what had Sylvain done but accepted Felix? His best friend in the whole world had feelings for him. Nothing could be more flattering, or more unexpected.

Felix has his tongue in Sylvain’s mouth and Sylvain thinks that maybe he’s horny in the way regular people are for the first time—not the way he gets, not when you just use sex for self-medication, for self-esteem, for self_-harm_.

Sylvain can remember wrapping Felix up in bandages when they were seven, bandaging him up in places he didn’t even need. He’d slap gauze on a cut on Felix’s cheek and take pleasure in how he’d toughen up, puffy red eyes blinking back trembling tears. Glenn had bested him again. You’d imagine so, when Felix is seven. And Sylvain’d say, “all better, dear” like a housewife and grin, and send Felix out again to get tossed into the dirt.

Sylvain wants to push Felix’s face into the bed, wants to fuck his best friend until he’s screaming, until he’s sobbing and these thoughts smash him dead like a deer running full force into a tree. If he could run full force into a future of just him and Felix, maybe he could. If his destiny and his family allowed it, then maybe he could.

_“You don’t need to do all this,”_ Felix had said. _“Your family will find you a pretty little wife since you’re so intent on having one. If you don’t want to run from your ‘fate,’ don’t.”_

Even then, maybe Felix had been hurting all along.

_“Just don’t get yourself killed.”_

It’d take a fool not to notice all that meant was ‘don’t leave me.’

“We should stop,” Felix gasps.

He gets this out just as Sylvain is deep in his neck, cuffing his wrists to the bed and… 

Like always, he stops. He lifts a hand to pause Felix short of kissing him and he says a bit too sternly, “why do we keep stopping?”

It’s almost terrifying how quickly Felix levels him still with a stare that could kill any lesser man. His eyebrows knead inward like two gnarled vines and he rears himself up from the bed like the living dead.

“I mean—I’m okay with it, I just—”

“Because I’m not gonna fuck you, Sylvain.”

It’s not even uttered venomously. For how terrible Felix looks, he sounds nothing but displeased with the sound of his own voice when he says it. Sylvain nearly cracks at the words.

“Why?”

Felix catches his breath a bit more.

“You don’t even know why.”

“I don’t! And—I’m not fussed about sex, honestly. I just… want to know how I’m turning you off, or what I’m doing wrong, if there’s _anything_ I’m doing wrong. I wanna do right by you. I wanna…”

Sylvain gesticulates in a vague, noncommittal fashion, his face unsmiling. “Make you fulfilled.”

Not an inch of difference becomes of Felix’s face, locked in something a shade worse than his usual flinty disposition. He almost seems despondent. All these emotions just blend in Felix’s facial muscles and Sylvain is none the wiser.

“Because it’s _you_, Sylvain. You’re never going to be with me.”

The air in the room drops a good five degrees, or it does to Sylvain at least. His shoulders shiver. His heart does too.

“I’m never… ? _What_?”

“Just, get off of me, you idiot.”

Two arms find themselves lodged in Sylvain’s gut, shoving in frustrated exasperation and Sylvain only budges to let Felix sit all the way up. A hand of his still buckles itself to Felix’s wrist, as he does often, as he’s been doing his whole life while Felix chides him, _tells_ him what an idiot he’s been while storming off. It’s the same as it’s always been.

It’s always been _him_.

“Stop it, Felix. What makes you think that I would never be with you? What did… I’m sorry that I’m not the _best_ at communication but, what did you think that all of this was?”

When Felix swats Sylvain’s hand away, there’s a split second when his face distorts into something of disgust, something cousin to disdain, something _hurtful_ and Sylvain wonders what he could’ve done to kick the dog so hard, and he is also the dog, and he is afraid of Felix and Felix says with one tone, “taking advantage.”

“Taking advantage?” says Sylvain. “Of me?”

Felix corrects, “of me,” and somehow it doesn’t altogether shred his throat to blood and bits on its way out the way that it does to Sylvain.

“Hah.”

The thought is so sickening. Sylvain’s hairs stand on end. This is what Felix thinks. At the end of Sylvain’s emotions he’s lied enough that not an ounce of genuinity can be found supposedly. His chest constricts and aches. But surely, Felix knew those words were going to do that when he said them, that’s _why_ he said them.

There’s no way it was meant to do anything but harm.

“I would’ve rathered it if you were taking advantage of me. Even with how many other people do it.”

Sylvain’s voice breaks. “I think I wouldn’t have cared if it was you.” And Sylvain knows how much Felix hates eye contact, but for the first time in a long time he sees Felix’s attention rush to him as if the crack in his throat were lightning starbursting across the sky.

And maybe he sees guilt bloom in Felix’s face.

“What do you mean?”

“I? Take advantage of _you_?” Sylvain can’t make himself laugh. “Is that what you think I did? Found out you were in love with me and wanted to exploit it? You think I’d do that to you?”

The boy before him is shaking like thunder, like leaves.

“I never said… I didn’t say _in_ love—”

“It makes no difference to me, don’t you see that!?”

When Felix’s answer won’t come immediately, Sylvain is kicking the covers off and rising up to his feet. Now he’s pacing around.

“You came to _my room_ pissed at me because I wanted to pull you to the side for a little kiss. Who’s gonna see us? Some knights? _Ingrid_? You told me to stop caring about my crest so badly and my family shit and just… forge my own path. Can’t you see that I’m trying to?”

“I never said I’d appreciate you grabbing me out in public,” argues Felix, coming to stand on his knees at the edge of the bed as Sylvain marches about the floor. “You gave me no reason to think you’d given me any serious consideration.”

“No reason? That’s what that kiss was, Felix. That was me acknowledging you in public—”

“That was you being a womanizer, doing what you—”

“Are you a woman now, Felix?”

“You _know_ what I mean.”

Sylvain grunts with a sigh.

“No, you’re right,” Sylvain says, stopping to plant one hand on his hips while the other shields his eyes in distress. “I know what you’re actually trying to say, that every person I give attention to is the same and I’m a good-for-nothing two-timer. Well, I didn’t see you that way, and I still don’t. You’re different.”

“I don’t know that,” whispers Felix, and it’s said so quietly, so simply in response to Sylvain’s answer that Sylvain almost can’t be angry at it.

Felix’s arms are crossed and his eyes are making love to the monastery wallpaper, the ugly thing that it is. The light through the window is growing orange.

“You grew up into a person I don’t wholly understand,” Felix says, “and it’s not my responsibility to learn you.”

True enough, Sylvain thinks. But—“It is if you love me.”

The air’s grown stagnant and Felix’s body is turned away, sat cross-legged and tangled in the sheets. To Sylvain he resembles a marionette with the strings all cut. His shoulders shrug down.

“Not if you don’t love me.”

The bed dips with Sylvain’s weight and he cradles Felix’s body perfectly up against his, back to chest. Sylvain expects Felix to move, to run. Perhaps he’s just too tired, tired of running or fighting about it. Sylvain can’t know. All he can say is… 

“I do,” he murmurs. “I really think I do.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Felix says.

Sylvain puts his mouth up next to his ear.

“You’ve convinced me thus far.” Felix goes quiet. “You make me feel things… no other girl has made me feel.”

“Well, we’ve known for years now that you’re not even into women.”

“Hey! Don’t try and pick apart my compliments,” Sylvain whines, cuddling up into Felix’s back and Felix lets him do it. “No guys either.”

The space between them all but bridges as Sylvain pecks at his neck, sprinkling the space with tender little touches that ameliorate the hurt.

Still, he can’t pretend he’s not dismayed.

“If you can’t trust me though, you can’t have me.”

“I trust you, idiot.” Felix elbows without strength. “I didn’t think you wanted me.”

Scoffing, “what’s not to want?”

“I’m a pain in the ass.”

Sylvain laughs. “So am I.”

Felix won’t disagree. Sylvain watches as he picks at his fingers, at the parts where his nails connect with skin and the little bits of gauze tied around them from little nicks of blade. He takes hold of a single hand and lifts it up to press his mouth into it. Sylvain feels Felix’s face heat up as he sighs.

These hands that have pushed and shoved away, that have reached and grasped and fought and killed. They’re in Sylvain’s now and they feel nothing but uncertain.

“I couldn’t fathom why you’d want me,” Sylvain says. “I’m not used to anyone thinking there’s something special about me if not for my house, my crest, my wealth.”

“You _know_ I don’t care about any of that shit—”

“I know, that’s why.”

It’s not until now that Sylvain’s notices the way Felix has laid his body up against Sylvain’s, gone slack and comfortable and lazy.

“You never seemed to fawn over me, or go out of your way for me. I figured you’d, show it in some way.”

Felix laughs for once. _Laughs._

“You thought I would _fawn_? For _you_?”

“You said you’d fallen in love with me!”

“I never said in love,” maintains Felix. “If you were expecting me to chase after you like some blushing little bride, you got the wrong impression about me.”

“But… you never seemed heartbroken or bothered if I—”

“All the things you do to make people chase you, I don’t care to fall for that. I’m not gonna make you feel special when you act out like that.”

Twisting in his grip, Felix arcs his body around and finds Sylvain’s eyes.

“Ask for affection and you’ll get it. Don’t try and manipulate it out of me.”

Sylvain blushes, actually blushes. Then he huffs.

“Th-then… don’t be so mean to me if I need it.”

Felix rolls his eyes around. “Baby.”

“Be nice to me!” Sylvain spins Felix the rest of the way into his lap, hugging him tight. “You’ve been nothing but mean to me today. Just be nicer! Tell me you love me.”

He isn’t expecting an answer, and Felix kisses him nice and hard. It makes Sylvain’s heart feel bubbly and buoyant, quite a task when he’s been convinced he’s not got one.

It amazes him that it could be this easy, that Felix could say, “I love you, you fool,” and it could feel like something real.

It’s proof enough that it’ll always be him to make him feel this way. Maybe it’s not fair but it’s fate, that whenever Sylvain gets love out of him, Felix’s got his eyes open. They’re hazy with a tension that Sylvain can recognize as love. He can’t put Felix under the same spell as those women, but there’s an obsession there all the same.

Maybe Felix won’t say it, so Sylvain will instead.

“Do you want me all to yourself?”

It’s muttered between their lips, like wanting and ache. Felix nuzzles their noses together. “Could you tell?”

Grinning like a monster, Sylvain cackles. “Just a hunch.”


End file.
